Learning to Let Life Be Messy (Without Giving Up on Yourself)

Motherhood. Neurodivergence. Work-from-home life. Burnout.
 And that uncomfortable in-between season where nothing is falling apart… but nothing feels settled either.

This episode is a deep exhale for anyone living in the messy middle.

Megs sits down with Candice Janae — therapist, coach, writer, and fellow human navigating real life — to talk about what happens when life shifts, routines stop working, and you’re trying to stay aligned without burning yourself out.

Together, they unpack how to:

• Adapt when life changes (again)
• Build systems that actually work for neurodivergent brains
• Let go of guilt, perfection, and “this should be easier by now”
• Communicate needs and share the load at home
• Choose rhythms and rituals over rigid routines

This conversation is grounding, honest, and full of “oh wow, that’s me” moments — especially if you’re juggling caregiving, creativity, and a career.

⏱️ Episode Breakdown (timestamps adjusted +39 seconds)

02:22 — What “The Messy Middle” Actually Means
03:46 — When Life Happens: Navigating Unexpected Changes
05:31 — Coping with the Unknown (without spiraling)
13:02 — Aligning Your Values with Your Real-Life Needs
19:19 — Creating Systems That Work For You (Not Against You)
24:47 — Letting Go, Grief, and Embracing Change
25:04 — Holiday Decorations, Traditions, and Letting Them Evolve
26:07 — Adapting to New Living Spaces
27:08 — Creative, Neurodivergent-Friendly Organizing Solutions
30:55 — Progress in the Messy Middle (Even When It’s Not Pretty)
37:13 — Why Rhythms & Rituals Beat Routines Every Time
42:54 — Sharing the Load: Communication & Balance with Partners

🌊 Guest Spotlight: Candice Janae

Candice is a private practice therapist by day and, in the online space, a burnout & balance coach for indie, self-employed, and freelance moms.

She works closely with chronically ill and neurodivergent moms who are trying to do all the things — without losing themselves in the process.

She’s also:

• An author of both fiction and nonfiction
• A water-lover (oceans, lakes, give her all of it)
• An introvert constantly navigating the push-pull between community and quiet

Candice brings a grounded, compassionate lens to burnout, balance, and identity — especially for moms who are exhausted from holding everything together.

✨ Connect with Candice

• Instagram / Threads: https://instagram.com/soul_cadence_coaching
  
  
• Substack: https://soulcadencecoachconnect.substack.com
  
  
• Website: https://soulcadencecoaching.services

Would you like to learn more about hiring Megs as your ADHD coach? Start here> The Perfect Place to Start

The Community is OPEN! Join right here: Organizing an ADHD Brain

You can also learn more about the community HERE> OrganizinganADHDBrain.com

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants 0:39

welcome back. I'm so excited to introduce you to Candace Janae. She is a private practice therapist. She is a coach for neurodivergent moms who are going through burnout and need some stability and balance in their life. She is an author, a self-proclaimed introvert, and I'm sure so much more. So I'm so excited to chat with you today. Candace, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Absolutely. So we first met on Threads. Talking about the messy middle, like what the heck is it? How do we get through it? But first, before we dive in, Tell us what we need to know about Candace. So I am a private practice therapist. I use my non pen name for that. And then in the online spaces, I am an author and a coach. and I live in the Pacific Northwest and then western Washington. And I love anything water related, so the beach, the ocean, all of it. And I got started doing this because I had a baby and private practice was not in the cards at that time, but working from home as a coach was. And I realized I really like helping moms through burnout and trying to adjust to motherhood and chronic illness or motherhood and neurodivergence and what that all looks like as they build something from home so their motherhood can look like what they want. It not necessarily what the world pressures it to be like. I know my neurodivergence really started to pop out, when I first had a baby, and there was definitely not the conversation happening then that's happening now. Right? Yeah, I agree. So it's so cool that you're doing what you're doing. People just need to be encouraged if nothing else. Yeah. So we're talking about the messy middle because ultimately when you start something, there's not a perfect before and after just because you want to do something. So can you define what the messy middle means to you? Well, first I love that you say You don't just go from A to B because That's so true. So I feel like I've lived a lot of my life in the messy middle without fully realizing it. But to me, the messy middle is this like somewhat chaotic, somewhat beautiful journey that we go through to get from this place where we realize, oh, this is a starting point to the next point of what it is that we're going through. And to me, what I've realized is a lot of it is not just a point A to point B thing, it's like point A to point B via point K, but then B is just another stop along the way to point Z. I see that messy middle as like. Those points that we make along the way that are sometimes chaotic and not what we wanted them to be. And sometimes it's just that gritting your teeth and keep going. And that's what the messy middle looks like to me. I love that. And I think we've all been through our own messy middles, which is partly I know why I became a coach and why I wanted to help people through it. Like, don't give up. This is worth it. You can absolutely do it. So what actually happens in real life that makes good plans fall apart, Life happens, right? Jobs get lost. You develop chronic illnesses, you get late diagnosed neurodivergent, A DHD on the spectrum, OCD, whatever it is, right? So life just happens. You. Have a baby and think you're gonna go back to work and then you're like, oh, I don't wanna go back to work. I wanna be here with my baby. I wanna stay home with my kids. Or someone gets sick and so someone loses an income or you plan to move across the country and COVID hits and you have to stop for another year and a half. So life just happens. Absolutely. was that something that happened to you? Did you move across the country? It did. We were, oh my gosh, in 2019, the plan was to move in 2020 and COVID hit. so we didn't move in 2020. We moved in 2021. Where did you move from? we moved from Oklahoma to Washington State. Wow. Oh, that's quite a bit of a change, I'm sure. Yes, very much. So when you think about yourself, or moving across the country, what kept you going during that time when you knew you couldn't move because of COVID? So our son was born the day our hospital shut down for COVID. And so we kind of eased into this, okay, we're just gonna take a year or however long to prep and to plan and to try to build as much momentum as possible. It didn't work out, but it still got us here where we are. you mentioned the unknown and not being sure of what the future holds. And I know that I went through that with COVID. It's like, well, what the hell is supposed to happen now? when we think of the unknown, in your experience when it comes to neurodivergent individuals, do you feel like that unknown holds people back a lot? I absolutely do. I work a lot, especially with just over my years in practice with individuals on the spectrum and with A DHD, and it's like there's this really high tolerance for handling. Hard, unfortunate things if they're known, but it's really hard to handle hard and unfortunate things if they're a shock, if there's an unknown attached to it, like we don't know when this is gonna end. We don't know what's coming around the corner. We don't know what the next phase is. Those kinds of things that really paralyzes people. And for me in that season, I had a lot of other unknowns too because after my son was born, he was my second I grew up with some chronic health issues, but after I had him, I was literally living in my bedroom. I was working from bed. I had my kids come in for 75% of the time, I was in my bedroom It was a wild time, to say the least. But there were so many new symptoms I'm postpartum. I just had a baby and the world is shut down. And my husband, his job was kind of in this weird transitional window because we had started the moving process and where he was in ministry, his job had to change to do what we wanted to do. So we were in this weird limbo of everything. And I do think that holds people back because it definitely would've been easier to just throw in the towel and be like, go back to what we were doing before, settle in here, stay where we are, and just let life go that way. But the unknowns of that too, I was just like, we don't know what that would be either. And that's beautiful. The way that you say that is like, yeah, it is comfortable to stay where you are because some of it is known, but truthfully, the only constant in life is change, right? So you can only expect change. I also wanted to relate this back to clutter for a moment too, because oftentimes we hold onto our stuff because again, we don't know if we're going to need it. We don't know what's going to happen, and we don't want to be absent of this stuff because of the self-trust. Right. We just don't wanna let go, because that's scary too. That's a whole nother element of the game, this unknown piece. That's definitely a factor in my life. Some of it is the will I need it later? Will I not need it later? It's, will I miss it later? I actually do have things from different periods of my life that either went missing or I had to get rid of for whatever reason that, like years later, I still have that tendency to be like, I hate that I had to part with this thing, but I'm trying really hard not to be that way because things happen, and so we keep our memories and we keep those things, but it's, it's that unknown, will I miss it or will I need it? Those are things that make it hard for me to get rid of things. So I love that you brought that up because I just moved across the country myself, we moved from Colorado to Massachusetts. And we let go of a lot in a very small period of time. It's what I teach. It's what I hope people do. But we let go of so much all at once. My nervous system was like, what the hell? What is happening right now? And there's so many things that came up. But what was interesting is I let go of these stocking holders that we had for our stockings. They were like these cool little things, they sit on your mantle or wherever you want on a shelf and then you can hang the stockings on them. And my husband asked me recently, Hey, do we still have those? And I got immediately annoyed hilariously because it was like, no, you hated them. You told me to get rid of them, right? And he's like, yes. And I don't regret it. what's interesting about this process is the fact that now that they're gone. I'm finding that like that was a piece of comfort that we had that now we don't have to go out and buy. So it was just this fascinating realization. We're looking at this, it doesn't mean anything to us emotionally. This is a different thing. We can easily go back and get it again. And truthfully, we can live our lives without it. But it was just interesting how that came up. even though I've let it go, I'm still gonna move on and allow myself to be okay, and also allow myself to feel the feelings that come up during that process. Right. Yeah.'cause there are feelings. There's so many feeling, so many feelings. there's so much letting go when it comes to change, not just with our stuff. So where do you think we learned the idea of like, once a system or a plan is set, it should just run on forever? I wish I knew because that is something that affects so many people, neurodivergence and neurotypicals alike. They're like, well if it's in place, it just goes and it should just work forever and it should just run itself forever. And that. Just not the way it works. this big CrossCountry move was not our only big change where we've had to readjust systems and we've had to look at how things work for us as a family who at the time through all of these changes had been undiagnosed, but suspected neurodivergent and what that looked like for us in the process. So I wish I knew where this narrative came from, that once a system goes, it should just either run on its own or just work forever. Because I would like it to stop. Or have the reminder that there's ups and downs. You have to try it. It's not going to just be innately true for you because you decided yes, it's gotta be practice and it's gotta be ingrained. Yeah. So when you're working with people, how long do you typically work with people for? In therapy, it's a little different, but in my coaching, right now it's primarily a three month program to really get things set and switched and moving. Okay. That's awesome. So when you see people come in and go through the change, what do you notice when it comes to the messy middle with them? Oftentimes I find that my clients don't even know that they're in a messy middle. They think they're either like at the start of something or at the end of something. And really those are still usually points within a middle of something else. And so usually they don't even realize, oh, I'm in the middle of some kind of. Transformation or process or change I get a lot of clients who are they've like just transitioned into a new phase of motherhood or business or both. And so they're like, yeah, it's the starting point. And I realized, no, you're, you're past the starting point. You're now in this little middle area here. And that's what we're cleaning up right now. It almost reminds me of project planning because it's like our life is this big project. And then all of these moments of change are these mini projects along the way of like iterations, right? You have to stop, you have to look, you have to evaluate. Like that's a very structured way of looking at it. That's more of like the, as long as I have a plan, I'll be able to figure it out type of thing. But when it comes to working with people how do you help them understand that they're in the messy middle? I start a lot of my clients with sitting down and really looking at their values and where they're out of alignment. Either because they're not making intentional choices or There's just something that's just missed because of life needs. And then I help them realize it's not always gonna be that way. This is just what your life needs now. And this need conflicts with this value. And you have to prioritize the need and then make intentional choices that way so you can get back into alignment. And then the places where they're not aligned, I work with them to get aligned so that they can feel like these intentional choices I'm making are exactly what I wanna do. And usually it's in that process that they realize, oh, I've already made the choices to start. I've already gone a few steps in, now I'm in this part that's gonna get me to the end. with anonymity intact, can you give us an example of what you're saying? Because the words. Are beautiful. Mm-hmm. But I know to like really understand, I'd love to hear like a story of how that's applied. So I'll give an example from my life. Moving here to Washington State, I have these like ideas of what we would do, being more active and I wanted to be the fun mom and the mom that like took my kids places.'cause I was working online, so I didn't have a nine to five job and I was with my kids, but there was a season where my health stuff was like, I have to prioritize this. So we're not going out as much as I wanted. But I still had to recognize this value of. Connecting with my kids and building a childhood that they enjoy and doing those things. What that looks like in the practical level is if my body is preventing me from doing certain things, what can I do in this environment that holds up to that value? So for me it was arts and crafts. It was movie nights, it was, dance parties in the living room while my kids danced and I watched and those kinds of things. And so what was happening was I was just, for a while doing none of it, I was just like, I'm sick, nothing's happening. We're just here. Like life is passing us by because I was not paying attention to that value and I was letting this need kind of rule. And so I sat down and I looked at my values and I was like, this is something that I said is important. Is it still important? Yes. What are my needs right now? My body is not doing well, so I have to prioritize that.'cause if I push, my body's gonna fall apart, and so, okay, how can I bring this into alignment where it's not gonna look like, going to the beach every day. It's not gonna look like going on hikes. It's not gonna look like this. How can I make what I need align with this value? That's how I started doing more of those things. And then as my body healed, we did, but for a season it just wasn't possible. I think it's really cool that you were able to sit down and analyze this and the work that you do. Mm-hmm. But so often we coaches still need coaches, and we need perspective on our own lives. We can't just live one way because we say something. We have to truly put it into practice. So yes. I just wanna acknowledge that because that's huge. Why do you think that we as women, or anyone out there has so much trouble understanding our capacity? Right. We do burnout. There's so many women listening, or men, anyone listening that are burnt out and they're like, well, how the hell did you even find time to sit down? What's missing there? What are we doing wrong? The easy answer is societal expectations. And that plays one role, right? The society expectations of. What it looks like to be able-bodied and neurotypical and a woman who does everything in your home. And so those things play in our minds. When we have something like, motherhood magnified the neurodivergence, which is what it did for me. So when you transition into a new role, business ownership, motherhood, parenthood in general these things get magnified. Health issues, neurodivergence issues, imbalances of. Roles and power, it all gets magnified because more gets put on your plate and then you start to realize, oh, something here has to give. This is not sustainable. But I think as women, we have particularly hard times admitting that we're so wired and ingrained to have to figure it all out, that we have a really hard time admitting that figuring it all out and doing everything is not sustainable, which is why one of the things that I tell my clients is, you can have it all, but you can't do it all. You can have it all. You can be the mom, you can run a business, you can, be at the pickup or drop off, or you can homeschool or whatever that looks like for you, but you can't do it all. So you have to find where you can outsource, delegate, just let things go in general. That's really cool. And I love that you're modeling it. And I know I said that already, but I'm just really impressed with that. And I say that also knowing that you're not excused of your human experience. And I'm sure there's times that it comes up and you're like, shit, this is what I teach and this is something that I, so to really sit down and hone in on again. Yes. That's one of the biggest areas of that for me, is the visual clutter. I teach simplification of systems in mental systems, but like I know that visual clutter causes such a hard time, but it's so hard for me'cause if I put it away, I forget about it. If it's not easily accessible, I'm not gonna use it. And then, things just pile up So for me, I want everything out and accessible, but I also want some of it put away. And so that's one area where I, I have to sit down and redo this. Like what do I actually need versus what do I value, but also what is actually going to make the system run well? Ooh. But also, I wanna highlight what you shared with me when we first chatted because we were talking about neurodivergence and organizing and finding something that actually works for you. So tell me where you keep your vitamins in your medicine. our vitamins and medicine well, our kids' medicine and vitamins are kept in our mug cabinet in our kitchen, When people come over and they see that, they think it's so strange, but it's what works for us. Somehow I realized in this home, when it's bedtime,'cause we do ours at bedtime. When we do vitamins and they have to do their other medicines that's where we keep them because that's where I will go look for them. And so yeah, I have learned that in simplification, it's a system that works for you. What makes sense for your home and not what makes sense for others, which is what gives me the freedom to let it evolve as it does. And that includes shifting how clutter shows up. this year has actually been one of our most organized and least cluttered years of our entire. Relationship, my husband and i's entire relationship. And so it's because of the freedom of realizing, oh, this system doesn't have to make sense to anybody else. No one else has to worry about why there's medicine in my mug cabinet. It just works for me. You need a mug, you go to the mug cabinet. But if you need kids' medicine, you go to the mug cabinet. And so yeah, that's freaking awesome. Yes, that is true. And it's it's these things and that's, I think that's a neurodivergence thing, is we tend to think, look how far, how far we have to go. Uhhuh, holy crap, why would I even start? But you've done it. You're doing it. It's part of your lifestyle now, and you've proved to yourself that you can do it. I know that a lot of my clients and people in my community shame themselves for saying oh, I put something away and then I forget about it. But also, there's too many things in our homes to keep up here in our working memory. Of course we're gonna forget about it, but like, is anyone dying because of it? is it something that could elevate our lives and we're simply not using it? And that's where we get to make a conscious choice when we do have that consciousness available to say, if I wanna use this, where can I go to put it, that I'll find it or I'll be reminded to use it and incorporate it into my life. And so it's those little things that it's just reframing and like recognizing these positive things that we have in our life and what we've done. because to me, you're doing an incredible job and it doesn't need to be Pinterest perfect. But that's also, I know I still expect it from myself. But then I have to remind myself, oh, I'm a human actually. Right? this is the season of our life, and I'm so proud of how far I've come. What I realized recently that actually helped my mindset a lot, and I realized this I think in the last month, is that my home, especially this year, maybe not as much in years past where it was a little more cluttered, but this year especially my home just mirrors the homes that I. Like that I grew up in and that my friends grew up. Like they weren't perfect. They weren't Pinterest ready, they weren't magazine ready. so like our houses and our friends' houses were just comfortable and lived in. And sometimes there was laundry on the chair and sometimes there were dishes in the sink. But then for the most part, our moms were putting the dishes in the dishwasher, or we were putting the dishes in the dishwasher, putting the laundry away, whatever it was. And there were usually stuff on the table as it made its way somewhere else, or, our toys were in the living room until our parents were like, Hey, go take'em back to your room, whatever it is. My house just looks like a house in the nineties and early two thousands. And I like that it's lived in. Yeah, it's comfortable. And unlike most of the houses I saw, mine happens to have all of our appliances on the counter because if they're not there, I'm not gonna use them. Yeah. This is okay. I don't need a Pinterest worthy house or a Instagram worthy house because I'm just living in a lived in house with kids. Yes. So, and it comes back to what do you want? Mm-hmm. Ah, and there was something you said earlier, like what is aligned with your values, but also what is your capacity right now? Yes. And something that's really important to me is having a lot of color in my space. Mm-hmm. I like things that are visually appealing and we're in a rental right now, so I'm not gonna spend a lot of money on new furniture, artwork or things like that when I really wanna curate that to the space when we do eventually buy a house. But because I had that in the back of my mind as I would move things around, It took me about three months to get to a place where finally I was sitting in my living room one day and I was looking over and there's like a green chair with an orange pillow in the corner. And I'm like, that's colorful. And I was looking over to the side and I was like, that's color. I'm like, I did it. Look at this. You did it. Yeah. And it's, that's what I want. And we are, I'm in my dining room right now. I'm surrounded by my girls' gymnastics pad that they use to do cartwheels on because this is my makeshift podcast recording studio. Before, I used to maybe put one or two pictures of the girls up on the refrigerator and one day I was like, let's just collage the wall with pictures from school, like artwork, and the girls have loved it. Now, previously I lived in a very curated home. Everything was labeled it got to the point where I had everything where I wanted it to be. I was very proud of it. But because we also wanted to get out of debt, we decided to leave that home and we had different dreams, we had different goals. So letting it go allowed me to start to see some of the things that I really value and love. It's given me so much. Understanding that it's okay that I have Halloween stuff still on the wall. And Thanksgiving stuff. And I've said to the girls like, Hey, I'm gonna take this down and put some Christmas stuff up so that it matches. And they were like, don't you dare. We love Halloween, we love the Thanksgiving. And my whole heart is like, fine, it's temporary. Like this isn't our permanent home and maybe this is something that we just do in our next home. Right? Like it could be in a playroom or in a space. I get to be creative and create my own space. And so I love that you said that because it comes down to what you want. But because we see what everyone else is doing. And we naturally, psychologically want to match what other people are doing. We wanna get accepted. So we see what other people are doing and we're like, well, I'll do that too. But truthfully, it can be so hard for our neurodivergent brains. We study this. Right. We're looking for it. Yes. But how do we ask what we want? It's that's so true. Because we're also in a rental, we're in an apartment and so when we rented a house, we did hang some of our artwork, but a lot of our artwork is very heavy, so it's I'm not gonna even risk it. but it was just our first Christmas. We had just moved in our second Christmas. I was sicker. Nobody wanted to drag everything out. So we have a tiny tree that we like put some stuff on. And then this year we have, I have a collection of stockings. It's my favorite thing. I collect stockings and so all my stockings are up. But those are some things where I looked at my husband and I said, some of my stockings are missing. And he said, well, you got rid of them when we moved across the country. And I was like, I don't like that, but it's okay. We'll just build from here. my favorites are here. And so those are up now. And then when we do get a home, I'm gonna have a gallery wall. Even though all the designers are saying gallery walls are out and nobody's doing them, I'm gonna have a gallery wall of art and family photos because that's what I want. And our children's clothing system didn't make sense to a lot of people for a long time, I had started creating it before I saw this video, but I saw a YouTube video of, I don't, her last name is Davis. I don't remember her first name, but she wrote the book Struggle Care, and she was talking about a no fold laundry system. And it's literally about keeping house without drowning, like when you're in a really hard time. And it was a similar process where like our kids' clothes would just be, each of them would get a drawer and I would just shove everything in. That's it. And when we moved here, it was in our laundry room up until this school year where I would just take their clothes outta the dryer. My daughters would go on her shelf, my sons would go on his shelf and then that's it. I didn't sort pants, pajamas, shirts, nothing. And then when they needed clothes, we'd just take out what we needed and then put it in laundry when it's dirty and then outta the dryer. Right next to the dryer is where they were. Now that they're older and we've started school this year, they have their own drawer set and that's divided into their little sections and they put their shirts away, their pants away, and their underwears and pajamas and those go together. But our socks, the kids' socks are all still in one drawer in our dining room table that has drawers in it, which our dining room table is next to our laundry room. So their socks, I don't sort them, if my daughter gets the itch to sort them and say, this is my socket, this is his sock, and these are our joint socks, then sometimes she'll do that. But otherwise they just go in the sock drawer in our dining room table. And that's what works for us because I value clean clothes, but I hate the process of getting there. And I can't stand for longer than 10 or 15 minutes at a time. So that's the easiest way for me to do it, where I don't have to think about it. Yes. I just, all of this, yes, I was talking to a friend the other day and. It's funny how you meet people and then they don't know a ton about you until the fourth or fifth time you're talking to them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I mentioned, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm a professional organizer. And she goes, oh, we could really use your help in our laundry room. It's crazy. right now we just have baskets for clothes, for each person of the family, and we're just hoping for the best. And I'm like, oh, is it working? And she's like, yeah, it's working, but it doesn't look good. Right. it's not perfect. We haven't gotten to the point where we're putting things away in drawers and things like that. And I'm. Oh, if it's working then that's incredible. But just like it was working for you, you were like, well what could we do to evolve it? It makes sense that it's here, but how could we take it a step further? Let's get a chest of drawers and let's put that in here and then let's use the drawers that are right here.'cause what the hell else are you gonna put in drawers and a dining room table, And it's so funny'cause we bought the table'cause we've lived in travel trailers a couple different times, so it's literally like, it's like the tiny house table that when tiny houses were huge. It's the tiny house table that everyone had from ikea. six drawers total, three on each side. now one side is where the kids' socks go, side that faces our kitchen is where I keep our plastic bags like you get at Safeway or whatever. And then we have a drawer in it that I created this year called the boredom drawer so that when my kids are like, I'm bored, there's card games in it, there's crafts in it, there's like, okay, go check the boredom drawer. And then when the crafts run out, we replace them and when they lose all the pieces to a game, we take that out and we put something else in. And so that's what our dining table is now. It's got the boredom drawer, the kids' socks and our bags that everyone has, but no one knows what to do with. And so I love that we have a quiet activity basket that the girls can go and grab things from. When I'm like. We need to relax, we need to chill. But what are some quiet activities? It's nice to just have a space to go to. You are doing so incredible. Like all of these things that you already know. And the clutter. Yes. It can still be overstimulating. Mm-hmm. And, you know, that's where body doubling can come into play. I have a community and that's something that we do together, is we body double, we do virtual decluttering together. So we meet, we talk about what we're gonna accomplish during this time because. Our clutter doesn't have a deadline. Right. Yeah, that's true. There's nothing on it that says, come do me until someone's like, oh, I'm coming over. Or you invite someone over and you're like, shit, now I have to do all of these things that I've delayed for so long. Yeah. so that's part of what we do in the community, which helps just making one decision at a time and allowing it to be easy. Yeah. so like I just wanna acknowledge that you're doing a great job because that's the messy middle, right? If it's still not done, you've made so much progress and that's really what counts so much. You're still on this way to where you wanna be. And it's not Pinterest perfect. It's what you want. And that's what matters. one of my goals is to make this idea be the Pinterest perfect or the Instagram or the idea that it doesn't have to be perfect, that it is what works for you. all of childhood is the messy middle, right? Because the best laid plans and then you introduce kids into them and your plans are blown up in the best way possible. So Yes. And it is overstimulating, like there are some days where it's like, please don't bring another toy out here. Take it all back to your room. I cannot handle it. But at the same time it's just nice to know that your kids are having a childhood and they are playing with things and you are crafting at the table and there is kiwi co stuff all around, or books that they're reading. It does get overstimulating, especially for those of us that are moms who are also. A DHD or on the spectrum, and I like my controlled environment or I like my brand of chaos in my environment where I know what this pile is, but please don't touch it because you don't know what this pile is. And so it's learning to live with that. This year has been obviously one of complete chaos in the world, but it's also been the one where I've just been like, oh, this can evolve with me. This system that we have here, it doesn't have to be perfect. And, you know, it can change and grow with us as we do. So I wanted to highlight, you said you know, I wanna create this new perfection, right? perfection. Of non perfection. Yeah. Something I notice I do still to this day, even though I teach something different, right, is my brain goes to perfection. My brain goes there. And part of it is because of my executive dysfunction, right? I have big dreams, I know what I want and I know what I've seen. So I've developed what I want in my head, right? and I want this version of whatever I've created, but these executive dysfunction makes it so hard to even get started, which is why so many people come to us and they're like, I don't even know where to start. If I'm burnt out. What do I even stop? Because I can't stop this. I can't stop all of these things. So. What I say now is I acknowledge the perfection. Like I see you brain. Mm-hmm. That's cute. I like your thought, but how can we make this simple? How can we make this easier? And how do we allow this to be a real life version of what I want, perhaps in my head mm-hmm. That I now know that I can get to this version. Right. I had that house that had curated spaces, but also those curated spaces took time to manage. Mm-hmm. They took time to keep up. And so if I'm changing my life to do that, I have to understand that there's still messy middles there. There's the before, the after, and then there's the after the after. Right. It's crazy. Yeah. Oh, what else did you say that I, I was like, I have two questions and then I just said one thing. Oh. But it was really good. That's okay. See, I told you brain farts are real. This happens to me a lot. Yeah. Where I'm like, oh, I have this thing and then I'm like, oh no, it's gone. And sometimes even that is so frustrating. It's like, no, I felt so good about it. Right, right. You remember the feeling that you felt about what you were gonna say and then it's gone Do you ever try to retrace your steps to be like, where was I in that moment so this actually does happen to me in my therapy practice sometimes too. And so there I really try to retrace my steps'cause I'm like, this is the work that we're doing. I need to be able to access my brain and the questions. And sometimes I get there and then sometimes I don't and we just shift or move on and I just accept that in the process. I currently work with a lot of women who are late diagnosed A DHD or autistic. And part of it is us together learning this relationship of how do we do this when we're worried that other people are gonna judge what happens if we like lose a question or if we, don't particularly care about a topic they're getting to see that modeled in me of what that looks like when those moments come up. that's an area that a lot of us fear that that rejection sensitivity rears its head where it's like, oh, people are gonna judge me because I forgot this question. or they're gonna be like, oh, you keep forgetting things, or You keep doing this when I'm trying to talk to you, or whatever. And it's like, okay, well how do we navigate that? How do we manage that? Mm. So it happens all the time. I love it. Yeah. No, thank you so much. When I first started this podcast, I was super high masking. And part of it was because I wanted to show you like, oh, we can all have it all together. And I have learned so much. We are not changing brains, we're just learning about them and how they work and like Exactly. That's it. So what's one sign that someone's actually doing this right, Even if it's messy. for me and my clients, it's when they feel more like at peace with what's going on around them. When they feel more like rooted and grounded, even when the chaos is still there because they realize that they're calming some of that chaos slowly. Like they know that it doesn't have to all be done at once, but when they start feeling more peaceful and rooted and grounded, that's when I know that we're going the right direction. what this year has taught me and what learning to evolve my systems in work, in motherhood and organization has taught me is that for a lot of us who are neurodivergent. rhythms create balance and rhythm and ritual is often better for us than strict schedule and routine. that's really what I work with my clients on, is setting up their rhythms and rituals that don't feel so structured and stringent It is a little different with my clients who are on the spectrum because a lot of them do want some rigidity, and so we play with it in that regard. But for those of us who are a DHD I happen to be both. So my brain is at war sometimes, but for those of us with a DHD, that rhythm and ritual is a lot more powerful and forward moving than strict schedules and routines that we see. The neurotypical world, the business world, having the very structured. So that's one thing I would like to share. I like that a lot. what makes a rhythm or ritual versus a strict routine? So I think of it this way a rhythm is just, this is the ebb and flow of my day, but I am not necessarily structuring it. So before my kids started school, it was, we're going to wake up when we wake up. But I'm gonna set an idea of like. This is our absolute wake up, which is like nine o'clock or whatever. but my kids don't wake up at 5:00 AM like everyone else's. thank the good Lord in heaven.'cause I am not a morning person. But it's like, okay, this is our window of wake up. It's not that I have to be up at 7:00 AM every day. It's that I'm gonna let my body wake me up between, six and eight or whatever it is, and then play around in there. And then for my day, these are things that I want to get done throughout the day, but it doesn't have to be done in a particular order. time blocking works really well. I'm not one of those people. And so it's, I'm not gonna put myself in a little box to do this. I just know that these are the tasks I'm gonna get done throughout the day. And then you kind of let yourself go through that. How you do your nighttimes, it might be, oh, at night we just dim the lights a little bit and we start to quiet things down and then we, get ready for bed as we need to. And then we go to bed. And this is a little harder with kids'cause you do need more structure when you have kids. When my kids weren't in school, that's literally what it looked like. It was like, there wasn't a strict time or routine of things. It was just like, bedtime is gonna be sometime between this time and this time with this being the latest. And wake up is gonna be sometime between this time and this time with this being the latest. If nobody's awake by then the alarm's going off and then we're getting up and starting the day. And so rhythms just look like what goes with your natural like way of doing things. And people get resistant'cause they're, they think but I have a job and I have this and I have that. And it's yeah, those things you have to schedule out, right? If we set an appointment for this that's on the schedule, but then what I do around that is gonna be different. What you do around that is gonna be different. So it's just like, this is the ebb and flow of my day. And then rituals are just like, how am I pairing these things together so that I get them done so that they feel more comfortable to do, but they don't feel forced so one of my rhythms is I have a weekly cleaning schedule. like this day I wanna get this room clean. And it's not about building it in, like I have to clean it all at once. It's just how does the rhythm of this cleaning task fit into my day? And then with my bathroom, that one, I'm like, okay, what can I pair with a bathroom cleaning to get it just knocked out where it just all gets done. So I'll either do my devotional or I'll listen to a podcast or I'll do a training or I'm cleaning my bathroom so that that gets done. But I'm also doing something that I would rather be doing and that's just that day. I just get it done. That's really cool. So do you have something that you refer to, to know what's expected each day? Oh, so we do use visual cues. So a checklist on Canva of like, this is our daily tasks and we don't ever have to look at that. Yeah. Just like, my husband and I, neither of us want to go to bed with a sink full of dishes. Yeah. So he loads them every day and just runs a dishwasher every day. It doesn't matter how many or little we have, it just. Every day. And then, I clean our counters every day. I just get that done. but I do have a checklist. And then in that checklist it's like, Monday is kitchen, Tuesday is living room, Wednesday is our primary bathroom, Thursday is our bedroom. And then Friday and Saturday have to do with the kids' spaces, their bathroom, their bedroom. And then there's a daily list and then a as needed list. I'm not doing laundry daily, like I, I'm not that kind of mom. It's not happening. So it becomes an as needed task. And so we have those on there too. And so I just printed that off and it's in a little, sleeve that you can dry erase on and then erase it and then, yeah. It's funny, I just started doing laundry daily, not because. I'm that mom, but I don't wanna do it on the weekends. So I decided, because my husband just started a job and he was doing all the laundry. So I'm like, what if we just did one load a day? I'll do it, I'll wash it and I'll dry it. But you fold it and put it away. And so we've been trying it. And so something that you mentioned I think is important. And I know it's hard for some wives, but it's really important to be on the same page with your partner. Because when we got married I said, I will do all the dishes if you do the laundry. I hate laundry. However, after I got sick and we had two babies and even a little bit before that, it kind of shifted where I just can't stand at the sink as long as it takes to do dishes. And when I do, it takes so much out of me, because on top of being neurodivergent, I have fibromyalgia and pots and a migraine disorder and another neurological headache condition. And so I have to be really thoughtful about my energy. And so we swapped, but we talked about it. And so like you said, you have to talk about, I'll do this part of the task if you do this part, or I'll clean this room if you clean that room, or I'll do this project if you do that project Sometimes that's really hard for wives to broach. And sometimes they're like, my husband said no, and I'm like, well, sometimes you have to revisit that conversation and find out what's gonna work for both of you. that is what I wanted to bring up earlier is sometimes we as women have a really hard time letting go of control. We want help, but we want help in the way that we dictate. Right. We want it our way. Yeah. One is like, we have to expect that our partners are gonna do it their way and it's also gonna work. And if they're starting from scratch, we have to allow them to be bad at it right away. Yeah. And not make fun of them and like encourage them and find ways to be a positive reinforcer, because that is going to get us more help, not only with our spouses, but with our kids too. That's a whole nother podcast episode. tell us about your podcast. Right now it's mostly on YouTube. Cool. and I talk about all things, motherhood, chronic illness neurodivergence and business. And in 2026, I'm really gonna shift into really focusing on freelancers, self-employed and indie creative moms, because that's the heart of what I do. Yeah. so service providers, creatives, et cetera. I talk where motherhood converges with these things and how we get out of burnout and how we. Find our balance and rediscover who we are so that we don't lose ourselves in all of it. And really how do we do it all without losing our ever love and mind. So I love that so much. Yeah, it's beautiful. All right, well where can my listeners find you? I would love for them to join me on Substack. I am growing that and I am talking a lot more about all of this over there on Substack. but I'm mostly active on Instagram and threads, heck yeah. That's so awesome. And I will put all of the links in the show notes below, so I encourage you all to go check out. Candace. thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. It was such a pleasure to have you. Thank you for having me.